Monday, August 12, 2013

Grand Jury

Want
to make someone groan piteously? Tell them they’ve been selected for jury duty.
Want to hear someone whine like a gut-shot Girl Scout? Tell them they have been
summoned for grand jury service.

Yup,
my number came up. I’m in the grand jury cycle until the end of September. I
don’t know why, but petit (trial) jury duty is one month in our area. Grand jury
duty runs for three months. That is just one of the differences between the
two.

Unlike
trial juries, grand juries don’t deliberate guilt, or innocence, they simply
decide if the District Attorney’s office has sufficient evidence to take a case
to trial. It’s sort of a vetting process for the legal world.

The
summons part of grand jury is just like trial jury summons: somehow, your luck
just ran out. Alaska uses all sorts of databases to find jurors. Got a driver’s
license? Hunting license? Fishing license? Registered to vote? Have you applied
for a Permanent Fund Dividend? (Many fraudulent applications are discovered
through jury duty summonses.) Sure, you can postpone the duty, but it’s much
like when you were a kid, the vegetables have to be eaten sooner, or later.
Grand jury duty is the vegetables of the adult world.

Jury duty: the veggie of adulthood.

“Little
Raynard, you ain’t leavin’ the table until your grand jury duty is all over!”

With
trial jury, there’s all sorts of opportunity to skip out on the fun. Just the
say the right thing and you’re history.“Why,
yes. I think an officer’s testimony is much more reliable. I mean, he’s a cop,
right? Cops don’t lie.”

“I
don’t like cops. If their lips is movin’ you can bet they’re lyin’.”

“Of
course the guy’s guilty. He got arrested, right?”

“I
say, hang ‘em all and let the good Lord sort out the guilty ones. Amen and
praise be.”

“The
only reason defense lawyers wear neckties is to keep the foreskins down.”

When
it comes to grand jury, there’s no such easy out. Potential grand jurors are
all herded into a courtroom and names are drawn from a drum. It’s sort of like Shirley
Jackson’s short story, The Lottery. If your name is pulled from the pot, you’ve
had it. The biggest difference being that in The Lottery, death was a
relatively quick affair of stoning. When sitting on a grand jury it’s “death by
droning.”

The
usual course of events is for the DA’s office to present the case, but only after
reading out loud, from the legal
statutes, verbatim every definition to every term used in the charging
documents. Undoubtedly the idea is to ensure all the jurors fully understand
the intent of the terms. However, the legalese requires further translation
from the DA, so the preambles drag on interminably. (There is some succor to be found by reminding
myself the DA has to go through this time and again well after I’ve finished my
service.)

It
isn’t hard to imagine the assistant DA’s making bets in the wings about how
many grand jurors they can get to nod off in their preambles to presenting
cases.

“Bet
you a six-pack I can get at least four more nodders than you before I get to
the meat of the case.”